This post is not going to deal with verbal abuse of children by adults. It is going to look at the very real issue of verbal abuse of adults and other children by children. It is a sad commentary on our society that this even has to be discussed. However, I have been the victim of some of the most vicious verbal blasting at the hand of a four year old.
Before we take off on this subject, I want to clarify a few things. I went to high school in the 1980s and suffered greatly at the hands of my peers as a geek. They were vicious. However, I have been verbally blasted as an adult by children far worse than anything I suffered as a teenager. The difference is the magnitude of the viciousness.
The Level of Viciousness
These days nothing is off limits and children as young as four learn this far too well. When these children reach the teenage years, it turns into cyberbullying. If you have never been the victim of cyberbullying consider yourself extremely lucky, and never cross anyone under the age of 30 to keep it that way. I really do not think until you have experienced firsthand what it is like to have someone post horrible things about you that are twisted half-truths, you cannot fully understand why so many teenagers struggle so hard with it. I understand. I have had the misfortune of crossing a couple of people under the age of 30 and had them take to social media and gossip websites and completely destroy my reputation and good name. You see, once something like that is out in the public arena, it is hard to dispel it no matter how twisted and wrong it is. These people must take lessons from the liberal spin doctors who deal in politics because they take your best points and reform them through outright lies and twisted half-truths to turn your good into something horrible. After all this happened, I truly sympathized with Clarence Thomas. He was once asked how it felt to be made a Supreme Court Justice in spite of the vicious attacks launched against him during his confirmation hearings. Instead of talking about beating his foes and making it to the Supreme Court, he lamented the loss of his good reputation and his good name. He said that he will never be able to get those back to the degree he had them before all the attacks, and he is right. Now imagine suffering something like this just because you made another person angry, and you are beginning to understand the world our children are growing up in today.
The Dirty Laundry Culture
How in the world did we get here? I believe there are two underlying causes for this. Number one, we have a dirty laundry culture. Since the days of Watergate, we have been a culture that flaunts people's dirty laundry. The song by Don Henley could not be a truer representation of our culture if it tried. We jump to the worst conclusion about people in the blink of an eye. No one ever gets the benefit of the doubt anymore. I feel so sorry for people that have to deal with public scandal. It is bad enough that you have your world falling apart around you, but then you have people flaunting your demise for the world to see. Do our children pick up on this? You bet. They learn early to jump to the worst conclusions about people. They learn that words can be a powerful weapon, and we give them plenty of modeling of how to destroy people with words. We model some pretty awful stuff without even thinking about how this is going to come back to bite us one day.
The Ugly Side of Free Expression
The second underlying cause comes from the early childhood experts. Since the late 1980s we have taught children that they can express themselves any way they feel without real consequences. This was started to help children that suffer abuse to feel okay to tell people about what was happening. As with everything else, they took it way too far and now children feel like they should be able to say whatever they want to say without any consequences whatsoever. This goes so far beyond just saying bad words. The worst verbal scalding I ever received from a child did not contain one cuss word, but that child used the technique of twisting half-truths to make me feel like the most useless creature on this planet. When a child looks you straight in the eye and tells you that "you are the worst teacher ever and I am going to tell my mom that you don't do anything all day but sit." For a person that takes great pride in her teaching abilities, but has to sit a lot because of health issues, this is hitting below the belt. Then this child continued to talk about how lazy I was until she had me in tears. Unfortunately I was not the only victim of this particular child. She went after her fellow classmates with the same viciousness. Fortunately one day, her mother caught her in the act and was completely horrified at what her daughter just said to another child. I would love to say that being caught by her mom cured her. It did not. She only became sneakier about her viciousness. I pray that one learns some good life lessons before she hits the teenage years or I will feel sorry for everyone in her path.
Modeling Civility
How do we fix this? To be honest, until we become a more civil society, I do not think we can fix this. We can preach all day long about how wrong it is to bully people, and then undo it all by talking about the latest scandal in front of the children. Our society takes way too much pride in its snarkiness. We are talking out of both sides of our mouth on this issue most of the time. We must treat people, ALL people with civility and respect. This means even the poor soul dealing with a public scandal because he/she said something stupid and the politician that we despise. In our centers we must have an environment of respect for each other, but this does not mean respecting a child's right to say whatever he/she pleases. That is not respect for other people. We must model civility and teach children how to have tact.
The Dirty Little Secret
I brought up this subject because it is the dirty little secret that many people do not discuss. Maybe it is because the adults feel embarrassed to have been so degraded by a child. As adults we should have been able to find a way to prevent the child from verbally abusing us and the other children in our care. Many parents share this same guilt and shame. They feel like failures because they are verbally abused by their children, but really have no real means to stop it without fear of losing their children or going to jail. We do not dare air our own dirty laundry because we have seen others do so to their own demise. We sugarcoat it and pray that by some means our children will learn better and become functioning adults. From my heart, I want to say to those providers and parents that you cannot stop a child from learning your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Children have been doing that from the dawn of time. What has changed is our society's tolerance for discipline. Many children feel like they have every right to use that knowledge against you as the adult every time it suits their purpose. Even though they may be tearing your heart out, somehow communicate to them that what they are doing is evil and mean to the core. You just might be saving the life of another child that is not as capable as you of dealing with the level of viciousness being thrown your direction. However, do not feel like a failure because a child used this type of manipulative tool against you. It probably means you have a tender heart and they viewed that as a weakness to be exploited.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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